Possibly the best example occurred on "The Chris Matthews Show" Sunday when Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution actually stated, "Sometimes I think that Bill Clinton ought to be put in the Nutty Old Geezer Club along with Andrew Young for some of the dumb things he's said lately."
For those that have forgotten, Young is the former Atlanta mayor that recently stated, "Bill [Clinton] is every bit as black as Barack [Obama]...He's probably gone with more black women than Barack."
This statement by Tucker followed other such incidents, including, as NewsBusters reported, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter publishing an article Saturday expressing grave concern that the former president's recent antics were harming Hillary's campaign. Hours later, the panel on ABC's "This Week" shared similar misgivings regarding Clinton's recent "temper tantrums."
Wonderfully, exiling the former president to the Nutty Old Geezer Club was just the beginning of the Bill bashing on Sunday's "Matthews" program:
- Newsweek's Howard Fineman: He taketh away because [Hillary] has to keep on explaining what he's doing, and because he's an independent actor, and he thinks he knows how this game is played better than she does. That communicates itself in his independent behavior.
- Syndicated Columnist Kathleen Parker: We do know he has a lot of experience biting his lip, but none biting his tongue...He's going to have a hard time keeping his mouth shut.
- Time Editor Richard Stengel: Well, as somebody once said, in every relationship there's a flower and there's a pot. And when there is a candidate, the candidate is the flower and the spouse is the pot. The problem is Bill Clinton likes to be the flower. He wants to be the bride at the wedding and the corpse at the funeral. Hillary has to be the center of attention and he takes it away from her. And by the way, she can't be the candidate of change when he's linked to her like that because it's about old times, it's about restoration. It's not about transformation.
- Fineman: Well, the problem is that he wouldn't mind walking three paces behind her, but then he'd wander off on his own, because he has independent relationships with the press, with the establishment.
With the Newsweek piece, and what happened on "This Week," there is suddenly a truly stunning number of prominent media members shaking in their boots over the possibility that the former president represents a huge problem for Hillary's candidacy.
More deliciously, they're all coming out of the Clinton Campaign Closet demanding their hero be quiet for a change.
It's almost like Christmas, isn't it?
